Dr. George Beauregard Couldn’t Save His Son From Colorectal Cancer. Now, He’s on a Mission to Help Your Family
Certain memories are indelible. Many bring joy—exchanging marriage vows, welcoming a child or grandchild, or witnessing legendary sports events, such as Carlton Fisk’s iconic home run in the 1975 World Series.
Other memories carry immense pain, such as discovering that your young-adult child has an advanced stage cancer.
On September 16, 2017, I was standing in a hospital room in Boston, when my previously healthy son, Patrick, then 29, received the shocking news that he probably had stage 4 colorectal cancer, which further tests confirmed. That grave diagnosis came with a bleak 14 percent relative five-year survival rate. Like the cognitive simulation of Schrödinger’s cat, my beloved son’s life now lay in a sealed box, with a hammer hovering over a flask of toxin. Would it fall, smash the vial, and kill my son? I could only be an observer. I desperately wanted to be the one in the box.
Fatherhood and medicine are central to my identity. As a father, I was shocked that this was happening to one of my children. As a physician, I was startled that a 29-year-old person could have this disease, the extent of which suggested that it probably had begun while he was in his mid to late teens. Despite my shock, disbelief, and worry (anger would surface later), I understood that my role went beyond being just a father. Throughout the three years during which he received superb care at Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, I had to be his father first, offering emotional support, hope, and love. The physician-adviser part was a secondary role.
My medical background and personal experience of surviving early-onset, advanced-stage bladder cancer at 49 provided me with tools to potentially help my son. I hoped that he would ultimately become a survivor, mirroring my own journey.
Patrick’s spirit was indomitable; his faith was usually unwavering. After his diagnosis, he had adopted a mantra used by Padre Pio, an Italian friar who was declared a saint in 2002. “Pray, hope, and don’t worry.” Hundreds of people ended up wearing wristbands and other accessories and clothing displaying those words to recognize Patrick’s courage through his illness.
Yet during the summer of 2020, I saw that my son’s pivot to fighting for life to fighting for time had begun, and I despaired.
12:54 PM on September 6, 2020, was a moment I will never forget. It was then that my 32-year-old son, appearing fragile but peacefully reclining on the family sofa of his childhood home, drew his final breath. Although relieved that Patrick’s suffering was over, I was caught by immense sorrow, not yet realizing that eventually a frail acceptance would slowly weave itself through my grief.
Patrick’s passing felt to me as if time had stopped.
Life after the loss of a child is like walking across a vast borderless field scattered with surface markers—birthdays, wedding anniversaries, and holidays—that trigger powerful memories and emotions. I suppose one can try to strategically suppress such markers, but that’s not easy to pull off. When the memories flood back, I try to take a moment to process my feelings. Beneath the surface, however, lie innumerable land mines, which incite emotions that can derail an entire day. Coping with the many emotional ambushes is tough.
Early-onset cancer wasn’t something I had heard or thought much about during the 40 years that I was in clinical practice and a physician executive. But that has changed, for me, of course, and for many other people. The rising incidence of cancer in younger people has been in the scientific and medical literature for a few years now and in the national news since the summer of 2023. But millions of people still have no idea that this is happening.
My son’s life shouldn’t be defined by cancer, but rather how he responded to it by becoming a strong public advocate for screening and funding for cancer research. So now, like my son, I’m on a mission.
Writing is how I express myself best, so in early 2020, I started writing to help myself navigate through what was happening. As the global phenomenon of early-onset cancers expanded, I felt compelled to tell my son’s inspirational story and raise awareness of early-onset cancer and the need to screen for it. Over three years, I wrote a book, Reservations for Nine: A Doctor’s Family Confronts Cancer. A labor of love and grief, it’s a book about family, love, loss, science and spirituality. Craig Melvin, NBC’s TODAY Show co-anchor, graciously wrote the foreword. Three months after my son passed away, Craig lost his 43-year-old brother to the same disease.
My mission has several objectives. One is to share my son’s inspirational and courageous response to his diagnosis, treatment and prognosis. But my message is more than a memoir and tribute. It’s a call to action for people who are eligible for colorectal-cancer screening: They need to have a conversation with their health-care providers about currently available screening methods and the most appropriate test for them.
It’s also a call to action for adults aged 25 to 50 (particularly those 30 to 40) to not be complacent about common signs that might herald the presence of colorectal cancer—abdominal pain, iron-deficiency anemia, blood in the stool, and diarrhea. Seek medical attention and advocate for yourself by pushing for diagnostic tests if you feel that your concerns are being dismissed because “They’re nothing to worry about. You’re young and healthy.”
And it’s a loud call for action to the medical community to get ahead of the dangerous rise in early-onset cancers before other individuals and their families have to endure what we did. Members of the medical community need to expand their knowledge of new diagnostic tests and how to incorporate them in clinical practice. It’s time to be warier about historical biases and notions about research orthodoxies and so-called evidence-based clinical guidelines while remaining true to the guiding principle of “First, do no harm.”
More broadly, I also seek to educate the public about the dangerous global rise in early-onset cancers, and to help provide a roadmap by example of loved ones going through cancer battles within their own families. Do we stubbornly continue with using a one cancer, one person at a time approach to screening or develop a more democratized, population health approach?
Age continues to be the biggest risk factor for cancer. Between 2019 and 2020, cancer incidence rates rose only in those under 50, unlike the 50-64 and 65+ age groups. Among certain major cancers (lung, leukemia, brain, and nervous system), the age-standardized death rate and total deaths for those under 50 generally declined. But there are some notable exceptions and emerging trends: death rates for younger adults with colorectal cancer have been rising. Worldwide, health experts report a rise in a range of cancers in younger adults, including breast, prostate, kidney, liver, thyroid, and pancreatic cancers. The global rate of early-onset cancer cases rose by nearly 80 percent from 1990 to 2019, while the number of deaths attributed to early-onset cancer also saw an increase of approximately 30 percent.
The data are indeed alarming. Since the late 1990s, colorectal cancer (CRC) has increased from being the fourth-leading cause of cancer death in men under 50 to the first. For women under 50, it now trails only breast cancer and might soon become the leading cause of cancer death. By 2030, it is projected that one-third of all CRC cases will occur in individuals younger than 50.
In 2024, the estimated new cases and deaths were projected to reach 153,000 and 53,000, respectively, including 19,550 individuals under 50. Estimates were that 3,750 of those under 50 would die.
Meanwhile, the Beauregard family continues to move forward, making new strides and memories while preserving the past.
Life must go on. Ours does with a framed photograph of Patrick sitting on the tabletop at every family gathering meal.
George Beauregard, DO has nearly 40 years of experience in internal medicine clinical practice as well as in leading health care delivery organizations’ strategic and clinical initiatives. He is the author of Reservations for Nine: A Doctor’s Family Confronts Cancer, published in March 2025. To learn more, visit georgebeauregard.com.
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